"Back in the day" (1993-2000) we had almost exclusively dialup customers.
This was pre-DSL in southern NJ. That actually didn't happen until after we
moved out here to CA in '01.

Our "home" area code (609) was divided into three LATAs, which meant the
"toll call" situation was complex for people using out-dial. We obviously
had to figure that one out.

First Solution:
Find a willing person in each LATA willing to host a modem bank in their
house. We paid for all the hardware and phone-comany connections (8 lines
on a "hunt group", a terminal server, and a dedicated connection to our machine
room). Dedicated (leased) lines fell into a different tariff than voice lines,
so the LATA thing, at least for south Jersey, was a non-issue. This worked
fine, but as you can imagine, got "clunky" with increased usage. As we would
say today, it did not scale upward.

Second Solution:
Our Digital Lines contractor actually came up with this one - and it was a
stroke of genius. Eventually it became the "ISP Model" - at least for New
Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. We ordered four Primary Rate Interface (PRI)
lines, one each for (a) Atlantic City to Cape May, (b) Brigantine/Seaside
to Toms River, (c) Hammonton South, and (d) Trenton. The rest of the state
was right where we were physically located, so we just kept our original 23-line
hunt-group running in the machine room. THIS was THE way to do this since
each of the PRI lines could handle 23 dialup lines with "digital presentation"
required for the old-style 56K dialup modem protocol, and true digital connection
in the machine room on our end. Worked like a raped ape (a Good Thing). And
was a LOT cheaper than doing it the "First Solution" way.

At our peak we serviced roughly 800 dilaup customers. Almost never a
busy signal. We strictly employed the "8 customers per dialin line" rule and
except on that rare instance when "everybody on earth just *had* to be on
teh net" it worked flawlessly.

DIGITAL (T-1)
Commercial Rate: $1,250/mo NOT including the telco local loop.
We had roughly 10 of those customers.
Yup. $12,500 per month just for plugging a 10meg ethernet cable from the
router serving the customer to the Big Router hosting our bandwidth to the
net.

$1,250/mo. for a T-1 (1,544 meg). Today you'd go to JAIL for that!
I have a friend paying his cable company $89.99/mo for 110 MB.
And he complains.
And I tell him "that is just a hair under THREE DS-3 CONNECTIONS!
"Back in the day" that would have cost you about 50 GRAND
a month!
Shut up and pay the bill!!

It's all about "what the market will bear." And that's the way it should
be. Thankfully, in most markets we have phone and cable companies keeping
each other in check, which is why both are hesitant to break the $100 barrier
for "triple play."

Some say that the new Title II rules will allow the government to decide
the pricing of Internet, but I'm skeptical about that.

I remember in the early 1990's, dreaming that maybe someday I could afford
the $300/month for a 56 Kbps connection to the Internet, so I could connect
this BBS to the rest of the world.